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“I hope the Jag has aged better than those of us going to my high-school reunion tonight,” snickers Jay Leno from across the black marble bar bisecting the kitchen of his family home in Andover, Massachusetts — 20 minutes north of Boston.

Tonight he and a childhood friend will head to a local country club to join the class of 1968 for a trip down teenage memory lane. The question on Leno’s and buddy Lou’s lips: Will childhood sweethearts still be head-turners, or will 40 years have taken their toll? They fear the worst.

Leno is more optimistic and, on the face of it, more excited about the other reunion he plans today. For the first time in 49 years, he will lay his eyes and hands on the car that ignited his lifelong obsession with the automobile — an obsession that extends to a private collection of over 150 cars and motorbikes in Los Angeles.

It was a warm and sunny day in the spring of 1959, when Leno had his quasi-religious automotive epiphany on the leafy suburban Andover street.

“Like most boys, I spent much of my time out on my bike,” Leno tells me as we prepare to leave his house and drive the mile or so to the scene of his lightning bolt of a motor-car moment. “One day, I got to the top of the hill near my house and stopped for a rest. I’d been up that hill many times and past the house that stood by the road. This time though, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something flash. There, outside a barn, was a man polishing a beautiful blue Jaguar XK120.

“I knew it was a Jaguar. I’d seen pictures of them in magazines. But the pictures were always black and white. Here, for the first time in living color, was the real deal. And so I sat, mesmerized, and watched this man polish his beauty. For five minutes, I stood and watched.

“It was a sign of the times, I guess, that he beckoned to me and asked if I wanted to sit in it. And to this day the memory of sitting in the XK remains one of the strongest in my automotive memory. I’d liked cars before and had some knowledge of them, but this was the car that brought that to life.”

Leno, who figured the man polishing the Jag was around 40 at the time, presumed he’d now be at least 90 or had even passed away. As for the XK, hopes of ever seeing it had long evaporated.

“But a few weeks back, I received a letter at ‘The Tonight Show,'” Leno explains as we drive toward town. “It came from a man in Andover. He’d read one of my columns where I talked about the encounter and said he knew the man and the car I’d seen 50 years back. What’s more, both still exist. I called the owner, Don Milligan, told him I was coming back east for a high-school reunion, and asked if I could come and meet him and see the car.”

Which brings us to now. In the car, en route to the Milligan’s 18th-century white clapboard house on the fringes of Andover. I’ve known Leno for eight years, and he’s unusually quiet at the moment. Maybe it’s jet lag. His Lear 55 landed at 4 a.m. from Hollywood. But given that we’re making the same journey he did 49 years ago, aged nine, by bicycle, his anticipation is palpable.

“Here, it’s here,” he chirrups as the house comes into view. “On the left.”

The time-capsule moment of Leno looking to the left to see the Jag gleaming in today’s sunlight doesn’t happen. A few tired 1980s wagons are the only vehicles on the knoll where the XK had stood half a century back. Jay looks momentarily deflated before collecting himself and jumping out to meet Don and his family.

Dwarfing the Milligan’s pretty house is a 19th-century barn big enough to accommodate a 737 fuselage. Don leads Jay into the barn, and it’s clear with our first step that it’s unlikely the XK will still be a runner.

A wall of car parts, farm equipment, automobilia, and logs-not to mention a 1941 Buick languishing beneath a dusty cover-stands between the door and the Jag, hidden away in a far alcove. The taste of disappointment fights with the scent of history in the atmosphere of the musky barn. Until Don unveils the sleeping beauty…

No curves on a British sports car, possibly with the exception of the XKE, evoke such carnal response as the XK120’s. From its chrome grille, up over the “Leaper” hood ornament, back past its elegant engine cover, open cockpit, and spat-covered rear wheel arches, the XK is sensuality on wheels.

Don unveils the XK for the first time since it last ran in 1970. That year, after having racked up over 100,000 miles, he laid his “Iron Mistress” to rest so he could focus his attention on his other cars.

“It turns out this is also an unveiling for his family,” Leno whispers, his eyes rarely leaving the lines of the car that cemented his love for the automobile. “His grown-up children have never seen the whole car at once.”

Almost 40 years in a barn doesn’t improve a car, and the dark blue bodywork has developed a faded and broken patina. As does the leather cockpit. Leno doesn’t seem bothered.

“Except for age, it’s exactly as I remember. The split screen, the steel wheels, the spats on the rear wheel arches. Time has stood still,” he grins, squeezing behind the wheel as he probably did outside the barn in 1959.

For an hour or so, Don downloads all the minute detail he’s gathered on the car. The chassis number, the engine number, the modifications. Everything. All from memory. Leno, equally fastidious, soaks up the obsessive retelling as a chamois leather would dry the XK’s curvaceous body. The pair have a natural bond beyond that moment in front of the house, a moment Don admits he does not remember.

But this day is more about Leno’s recollections and expectations. Sure, the car is no longer running, but the fact that it and Don still exist and this completing of the circle of Leno’s car life counts for much more.

“It was an emotional return down memory lane,” Jay acknowledges wistfully as we departed from the Milligan’s. “This was the car that kicked off my obsession, the car that inspired my car collection. This was the first car I really wanted. Had it not been for the kind man who beckoned me over, I might never have had this passion. And 24 years later, the first classic car I bought was a 1954 XK120. Such was the power of that day in 1959.

“This is why I encourage kids to come and look at my cars. And why, when a kid wrote to me that he was in trouble, that he’d lied to his friends saying I was his uncle and that I had a Lamborghini Countach (I do), I agreed to drive him to school. When we pulled up in front and the Countach doors rose up, his friends were stunned. Maybe that moment will have the same effect on them as the Jaguar had on me.”